


Down with the sickness

by ghostgirlintraining



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, More characters added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-27 04:42:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30117324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostgirlintraining/pseuds/ghostgirlintraining
Summary: It looked dark inside the bowling alley.Eren tried to step as lightly as he could on the cracked asphalt as he moved closer to the entrance. Or at least what was left of it.The glass sliding doors had been all but smashed to pieces, leaving only a warped metal frame where glass used to sit, the once bright neon entry sign dim and coated in dust.AKA the Attack on Titan zombie AU I felt like writing.
Kudos: 2





	1. Bad times at the bowling alley

**Author's Note:**

> I haven' t read any AOT Zombie AU fics, so if there are similarities, that's pure coincidence.

It looked dark inside the bowling alley. 

Eren tried to step as lightly as he could on the cracked asphalt as he moved closer to the entrance. Or at least what was left of it.   
The glass sliding doors had been all but smashed to pieces, leaving only a warped metal frame where glass used to sit, the once bright neon entry sign dim and coated in dust.

Eren cursed silently to himself.   
He had drawn the short straw and was saddled with the responsibility of exploring the building. He turned to look back at the van, where Mikasa and Armin were sitting. Mikasa had slid open the door and was perched on the edge, with one leg on the ground, holding a baseball bat. They had been lucky enough to find a hardware store that hadn’t been completely raided a couple of weeks ago, so Mikasa had gotten the idea of driving multiple 5-inch nails through the business end of what she often referred to as ‘Corpse Killer’. 

Armin meanwhile, was sat tensed in the driver’s seat. One of his hands rested on the steering wheel somewhat calmly, but Eren knew his other was gripped around the keys, read to flick on the ignition in case a speedy getaway was needed. He nodded at Eren through the windscreen and gave him a thumbs up for encouragement.

Eren adjusted the green bandana covering his nose and mouth as he crept through the entrance, allowing the darkness to swallow him. He waited for his eyes to adjust as he flexed his grip on the hockey stick he had recently taken from an abandoned high school. Eventually he was able to make out the space-themed carpet that lined the floor, then the arcade machines, and further inwards he could see the six bowling lanes that reached to the back wall.

The arcade machines had been smashed in and now there were barely any stuff left inside them. Eren cautiously peered into the nearest one and saw it only had a handful of faded plushies from a once-popular kids show. He walked further inwards, his heavy brown work boots causing the carpet to crunch uncomfortably beneath him, whether from dried blood or the syrupy remains of spilled slushies, he hadn’t the faintest clue. 

The air was dense and dusty from years of abandonment and neglect. It may have once inhabited some squatters, or been a makeshift clubhouse for some renegade kids, but it had clearly been months since anyone had entered the building. There were holes in the ceiling from where rainwater had eroded through the roof, so small spots of mid-afternoon sunlight riddled the floor, ironically adding to the aesthetic of the 80s inspired space-themed bowling alley.

He stopped to adjust the shin guards he had strapped over a pair of jeans which were two sizes too big for him. The darkness only amplified the summer heat, and the bandana was beginning to make Eren feel lightheaded. He could see the flecks of dust in the air but figured inhaling a bit of dust was better than passing out from heatstroke. He hooked his finger on the edge of the fabric and pulled it to his chin, walking deeper inside.

As he reached the edge of the bowling lanes, he began to smell it.

At first he thought is just rotting meat from the freezer that hadn’t been saved, but he quickly realised it was coming from the pin pit at the far end of the bowling lanes. He walked about four feet up the lane before he saw the blood smears.

The blood had dried, but was still fresh enough that it was a dark rust colour, and hadn’t begun to flake yet. Peering closer he could see faint scratches on the linoleum that could only have been made by someone’s nails.

Something, or someone, rather, had been dragged down there and eaten. Or-  
Eren heard heavy breathing towards his left.

He turned slowly to find it perched on top of the bowling assistant’s booth, teeth bared, looking at him.

It being the reanimated corpse of what used to be the bowling assistant.

“RED!!” Eren yelled as it lunged towards him.


	2. The beginning of the end (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically just backstory and worldbuilding so I don't have to write a bunch of exposition later on.

Four years ago, the world had gone to shit.

It started in the city of Stohess. A thirty-year old woman had stumbled into the city’s hospital, saying she was sick. At first it had seemed like a newly mutated version of the common flu, but when her blood started to turn black and her skin started to rot, the doctors began to lose ideas of medication they could administer to her.  
Two weeks later, she died in hospital from the unknown virus. Two hours after the doctors had pronounced her dead, she attacked two of the nurses who were transporting her corpse to the morgue. When the doctors found the nurses, the patient was gone and the nurses were already infected with the same virus.

It made headlines, and news stations started jokingly referring to the new disease as the ‘zombie virus’, ridiculing the doctors for not being able to tell whether or not someone is alive or dead. People had laughed, made jokes about it online, then moved on.

Four months later, a small settlement of farmers in the town of Dauper had been completely wiped out by a mob of the infected ‘zombies’.   
Casual evening news had turned to frantic reports of the growing viciousness of the infected. The virus had severely mutated and now anyone who was infected would be dead within twenty-four hours. Countless doctors began appearing in late night specials, using long words and pointing at medical diagrams, displaying how the infection spread. 

First, they had said that you would get what seemed to be flu symptoms, then you would begin to throw up anything you tried to ingest. Your skin would tighten, dehydrate and rot, as your blood vessels would begin to dilate and protrude. Next, your teeth would grow longer and sharper, and your gums would start to bleed. Then you would die. And within thirty minutes you would return.

Eren remembered his mother dragging him and Mikasa to the supermarket after school one day, so that she could panic-buy food.  
“We need to get corrugated steel to nail onto the windows, remind me on our way home,” she’d said, while frantically checking the expiry dates of cans in the food isle.   
Fourteen-year-old Eren had rolled his eyes and half-heartedly nodded his head, before peering at the canned food in the trolley.  
“Baked beans? Spam? Canned spaghetti? Please tell me this is a joke,” He had asked. 

“I like canned spaghetti,” Mikasa had interjected, picking up some canned peaches to put in the trolley.

“I don’t see why this is necessary. We live all the way in Shiganshina,” Eren had complained to them, balancing his torso on the edge of the trolley.

They had both ignored him and they had driven home with enough food to last them a year and six sheets of corrugated metal. 

Six months after patient zero had died, scientists began to understand how the virus spread. When the infected would bite someone, the fluids that bled from their gums would enter the victim’s bloodstream, infecting them with the virus. Painkillers and sedatives were theorized to slow down the process, but it was widely agreed on that the only way of stopping the infected was to break their skulls open. 

Videos of amateur ‘zombie hunters’ began flooding the internet, where they demonstrated how to most effectively kill the zombies, using ramshackle melee weapons they had fashioned from household appliances. Carla had the next spent weeks reinforcing the basement, blocking out the windows, building a toilet and tap in the corner, and methodically stacking all the non-perishable food in the corner. Eren had thought her to be paranoid, but she was probably the only reason they survived.

Eren’s father Grisha, was a local doctor, so when the virus had hit their city, he was the first to know. 

Eren, Mikasa and Armin had been in the sitting room playing a videogame when Carla had walked in, red eyed and shaking. 

“Are you okay?” Eren had asked, pausing the game and walking up to her. 

She had looked away from him when she broke the news. “Your father isn’t coming home,” she had said shakily. She didn’t have to explain for them to know why.

They knew they didn’t have the luxury to spend time grieving, so they cried as they drilled the corrugated metal into the window frames instead. Armin had run home to be with his grandfather, and Mikasa, Eren and Carla, had sat huddled in the kitchen, waiting for the worst.

It turned out corrugated metal wasn’t enough to stop them after all.

When they came, it was through the roof.

They heard it before they saw it. It had scaled the tree that grew by the side of their house, and after finding a weak point in the shingles that lined their roof, fell through to the attic. Mikasa saw it first, as it scuttled down the stairs on all fours. When it had lunged at Carla, she had hit it in the side of the head with a frying pan, using enough force to severely disorientate it. Before it could regain its balance, Eren had driven a garden spade into its skull, using his heel to push the metal part further into the crack he had created, causing clumps of rotten brain matter to spill onto the tiled floor.

They had stood over its still corpse, panting from the sudden physical exhaustion.

“I think he used to be a McDonalds employee,” Mikasa had noted, wiping the side of her frying pan on the mud and bloodstained uniform on its back.

“It,” Carla had interjected, pulling the children gently away from the corpse. “It isn’t a human anymore. We should get to the basement. Now.”

Carla had pushed them out of the kitchen and through the adjacent corridor, keeping her hands firmly of the backs of their necks to make sure they didn’t slow down, looking back every other second to make sure another one hadn’t found its way through the hole in the roof. As they reached the top of the stairs that led down to the basement door, Carla had let out a scream of terror. Before they could turnaround, Carla had shoved both Mikasa and him down the stairs towards the basement. Eren remembered looking back from the bottom of the stairs, to see his mother get full body tackled by a zombie. It had sprung at her leg and had begun gnawing at her calf, seemingly too occupied with biting her to bother trying to attack the children. Its dirty fingers had dug into her leg, holding her in place and stopping her from wriggling away.

“RUN!” she had screamed, making a pushing motion towards them with her hands. “EREN! RUN!!”

He had watched helplessly, feet stuck to the ground, until Mikasa pulled him into the basement and bolted the door behind them.

“No! Stop! What are you doing?! We can save her! We can still save her!” he had screamed with tears in his eyes, trying to claw open the bolted door.

Mikasa had had to throw herself on top of him, pinning him down with her weight to prevent him from opening the door. 

“We can’t. You know we can’t,” she had muttered, squeezing him tighter.

“NO! We can! We can!” he had argued, trying and failing to fight against her strength, only stopping when he had noticed the tears in her eyes as well.

“We can’t,” she had repeated, voice cracking with grief.

Eren had soundlessly moved his arms to hug her, and they lay there in silence, waiting for the screams of their mother to die out.


End file.
